Best Practice Data Security Methods

December 20, 2016

Data security is an integral part of any business. Keeping sensitive information not only protects your employees but also protects your clients as well. Keeping this data secure helps to add customer loyalty, which will only help your business moving forward. There are many different ways to keep your information safe. Here are some best practices when it comes to data security methods.

One of the best ways of keeping data secure is by limiting access to sensitive information. Access to sensitive data should be acquired by a need to know basis only. Employees with access to this information should have specific passwords to access this information as well. Also, access to the data can be timed and logged so that you know which employee is accessing information and for how long. Of course, another must for businesses when it comes to securing data is to have the proper cyber products in place. Anti-virus and malware protection can be costly, but it should be seen as an investment against potential future hacking incidents, which can cost even more money down the line.

Another type of data security that is not talked about as often is the destruction of data. Usually, data is forgotten about when it’s stored on old hard drives or memory sticks. Even when the data is deleted from these devices, the data is still stored and can be recovered. To protect against this information being retrieved, data destruction is the best way to keep this information secure. The safest way to ensure this data from being accessed is through the physical destruction of data. For this to happen, companies will take old hard drives, for example, and physically destroy them, rendering all information on them unreadable. Data destruction is an essential part of data security that all businesses should keep in mind.